Albert Costa and Jack Aitken are at a loss after a tough Sachsenring Saturday: especially after the stop it became difficult for the Emil Frey Lambo 63
“That was not our day” – Jack Aitken perfectly sums up Saturday’s race of the Emil Frey Lamborghini 63 at the Sachsenring in five words. Yet everything started so well for the Swiss squad. Team-mate Albert Costa put the car on the third row and worked his way up to fourth place at the start.
But that was it for the good news. Costa soon had to let go and held off a total of seven drivers in his stint. “We are just nowhere. We’re lugging around ten kilograms of extra ballast. The car is honestly undriveable,”
“From the third lap onwards I had no grip from the tyre. We were just slow. I had vibrations from the tyre and the pressures were too high. We knew we didn’t have the best car for today, but it would still have been possible to fight for the top 5. We are just nowhere and falling behind.”
Even adjusting the tyre pressure at the pit stop did not fix the problem on the Emil Frey Lamborghini 63. “Jack is also having problems and is going a second slower than everyone else. That’s not normal,” the Spaniard wondered. But what exactly was going on with the Lamborghini Huracan GT3? We’re still in the dark here.
In Jack Aitken’s stint it got worse
“We’re not sure. There were a couple of minor things that we found. We had a little problem with the car, but we need to confirm that and look at everything tonight,” explained Aitken. All that is certain is that they were “not able to show the true pace of the car”, as the Formula One test driver continues.
A look at the lap times illustrates how dramatic the loss of pace was for the title aspirant. In the early stages, Costa still managed to set times in the mid 1:20 minute range. But already in his stint the speed of the Lamborghini dropped significantly. Costa’s slowest lap time was 1:22.192 minutes.
After the handover, Aitken could not go beyond a time of 1:21.392 minutes, set on the third lap after the driver change. The Briton slipped into the high 23s in places thereafter, only breaking the 1:22 minute barrier once more in the final 20 laps. The comparison with the winner shows how big the gap and discrepancy are.
Costa’s delta between his personal best and slowest lap was 1.703 seconds, that of team mate Aitken even 2.492 seconds. For Fabian Schiller in the ZVO-Mercedes 4 (Schiller/Gounon), for example, the difference is “only” 1.403 seconds.
Duell against Emil Frey colleague: “I let him go “
This underlines Aitken’s impression that the problem with the Emil Frey Lamborghini 63 “certainly got a bit worse” as the race progressed. To make matters worse, there was a hairy scene with teammate Franck Perera off turn 11, when Aitken almost pushed the Frenchman into the grass at high speed.
Not the result that we were hoping for…
Results race 1
▪️ P9 14Tomorrow is a new day, means a new chance for us. Team is motivated adacgtmasters emilfreyracing lamborghinisquadracorse pic. twitter.com/fiec3njb9w
– Emil Frey Racing (@emilfreyracing) September 24, 2022
“We’ve already talked about it a little bit. Of course, it was a bit tight. At that point I was still trying to defend the position. But I was much slower,” Aitken comments. “A few laps later I let him go, because in the end he would have passed me anyway. It wasn’t smart to hold him off then.”
In the end, it was eleventh place for Costa/Aitken, which means a yield of only five points and thus a bitter setback in the championship fight. The three title rivals all finished in the top five, and with three races to go, the gap to Raffaele Marciello has grown to 43 points – the maximum that can be gained on a race day is 28.
On race Sunday at the Sachsenring, Albert Costa and Jack Aitken will have another chance to keep their ADAC GT Masters title hopes alive. Aitken is also speculating on this when he says: “Things should be better again tomorrow. “
